2016 Olympics Announcement Countdown, Weird Chicago Facts!

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Lolita Carrico

 

The 2016 Olympics announcement will be today at 1pm EST/10am PST!

People in Chicago are counting down the hours as the International Olympic Committee announces the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics today in Copenhagen. The final candidates are Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janiero and Tokyo.  President Obama to pitch for Chicago and the United States!

If the Windy City gets the Olympic bid, here are some weird Chicago facts you should know. Dawn Reiss over on TrueSlant.com has a list of hilarious and random factoids about Chicago:

People Can’t Spell Our City’s Name
In Google searches, Chicago is one of the most commonly misspelled place names in the US with many spelling it ‘Chicargo’.  In August alone there were 40,500 searches for Chicargo!

Lake Michigan is the Biggest Lake (surface area), Within One Country, in the World
We live on a really, really big lake. So big in fact, that many people think it looks like an ocean when they first see it, which is why it is one of the five Great Lakes. (It is the second largest Great Lake by volume and third largest by surface area.) But it is the largest lake (by surface area) in the world to be in one country.

We Put Statues of Wrong Presidents in the Wrong Parks
In the late 1800’s it caused a lot of confusion.  Grant Park features a huge statue of Abraham Lincoln. While Lincoln Park features a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, as noted by Matt Lowe, a Columbia College graduate and former Chicagoan who now lives in Kansas City.

Check out more fun Chicago facts over on TrueSlant.com.